The other day i couldnt walk and had to go to school on crutches. It was like every 5 seconds people were asking me "What happned?" My response -"My arthritis is in a flare" Them- "I thought only old people get arthritis!". I am so sick and tired of this, and i wish there was somthing else i could say! Any tips would be WONDERFUL!!!! Oh good LORD. I *still* go through that hunny, and I'm 23!!!!! I have a strange sense of humor, and so a lot of times I'll make up very outrageous and outlandish stories (like, well I was trying to save a baby from a burning mattress factory when all of a sudden, and you're not gonna believe this, a PLANE crashed right into it! In my panic I tripped over the water hose I was using, and sprained my ankle. Turns out there wasn't even a baby in there. Just some weird tree frog) Hahaha it usually gets a laugh, and most people don't ask anymore beyond that. I think they get the hint that I don't want to tell them. Apparently, it's easier for me to make up crazy stories for people than to explain RA to them....
Ha ha, Katie. Love the burning buliding/baby/plane/weird tree frog story. As for you Marzapan, I also was diagnosed with JRA at a very early age (18 months). Was in remission from about age 3 until I was 8. It was at that point that classmates started asking questions. Well, no, not really. I was always pretty quiet in school and pretty much kept to myself. So mostly what I got was a lot of staring and pointing. Every once in a while, some kid would approach me and ask, and I would explain it the best I could. Missed most of the second half of my 2nd grade year, when I went out of remission. Spent 3rd grade in a small, rural school on Oklahoma, was absent most the time, and didn't have a lot of questions. Then, for 4th grade, my family moved back here to Illinois. On the first day of class, my teacher suggested that I get up in front of the class and explain what my problem was. That might seem like kind of a rude thing to make a kid do at such a young age, and I didn't really care either way what other kids thought, but looking back on it now, I think that was a very good idea. That way, I just got it all out in the open and was able to let my classmates know exactly what my problems were and answered any questions they had. From that point on, I went to the same school until graduation and never really had anyone ask me again what was wrong with me, at least not in school (I DO still get asked when I'm out and about sometimes, had one guy ask what I liked to be called, a midget, or a dwarf, little person, whatever. So I told him that a) I didn't have any type of dwarf-ism, I had arthritis, and b) as far as what I liked to be called, I told him my name was Jesse, so just call me that, lol). But getting it all out in the open in school really helped. I mean, it was only the kids in my particular class that I told, it didn't go in front of the whole school or anything. But like I said before, I was never really asked again by anyone at school what was wrong with me. My theory is that most kids would rather ask smoeone else if they know what's wrong before actually confronting the person themselves. So I guess people would see me, ask around, then someone from my class would hear the question and explain it. Then, word just kind of spread.
So I suppose you could go either way, just kind of blow them off or give them some crazy, burning building story, which is just fine if that works for you. It might stop any firther questions. Or, you could just try and explain to as many people as you can what your situation is all at once. If actually getting up and making a whole speach in front of everybody isn't your cup of tea, then maybe if you have a school paper or something, you could put an article in there about it. Or maybe even see if your school would let you arrange some kind of charity drive or something for either the arthrits foundation, or the make-a-wish foundation. That could maybe give you a sort of round about way to inform people of your case. I never really had any problems talking about it to other people. For the most part, people are just curious and just want to know what the problem is. But it would get annoying having to explain the same thing over and over again. I don't know how big your school is, but I imagine that the more students there are, the more times you'd have to explain yourself. So I would say that any way you can just get that info out to as many people as possible at one time would be best, and eventually, word will just spread and you won't get questioned so much.
I hope these suggestions are heplful to you in some way,
Take care,
Jesse